Sample AMICO Record

Copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Creator
	Jacques-Louis David (French)
	French, 1748-1825
	Artist
Work
	The Death of Socrates, 1787
	51 x 77 1/4 in. (129.5 x 196.2 cm)
	Painting
	Oil on canvas
Ownership
	The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA
	Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1931
	Rights
	Accession Number: 31.45
Commentary
	Context: Accused by the Athenian government of denying the gods and corrupting the young through his teachings, Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.) was offered the choice of renouncing his beliefs or being sentenced to death by drinking hemlock. David shows him calmly discoursing on the immortality of the soul with his grief-stricken disciples. The figure at the foot of the bed is either Plato or Crito. Painted in 1787 the picture, with its stoic theme, is perhaps David's most perfect Neoclassical statement. The printmaker and publisher John Boydell wrote to Sir Joshua Reynolds that it was 'the greatest effort of art since the Sistine Chapel and the stanze of Raphael. . . . This work would have done honour to Athens at the time of Pericles.' The subject is loosely based on Plato's 'Phaedo,' but in painting it David consulted a variety of sources, including Diderot's treatise on dramatic poetry of 1758 and works by the poet André Chenier. The pose of the figure at the foot of the bed was reportedly inspired by a passage in a novel by the English writer Richardson.
Descriptive Terms
	Paintings
Record Identification
	MMA_.31.45

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